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Aweil Centre fire, 17 November 2019 Aweil Centre

Out · last detection 6 Dec 2019, 11:44 UTC

The fire started on 17 November 2019 in Aweil Centre, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,038 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 18th largest in Northern Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 53 with a page). Number 40 in South Sudan in 2019, of 158.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Aweil Centre · 2016Aweil Centre · 2017Aweil Centre · 2016Aweil Centre · 2016

Burnt area
12,038ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
17 Nov 2019 – 6 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
17 Nov
2019
Heat detections
421
in a single hotspot: 126 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
227MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Nov6 Dec
6 Dec 2019

How it evolved, day by day

18 Nov 2019 · 143 MW · 13 19 Nov 2019 · 76 MW · 8 20 Nov 2019 · 215 MW · 25 21 Nov 2019 · 237 MW · 31 22 Nov 2019 · 1,096 MW · 67 23 Nov 2019 · 69 MW · 12 24 Nov 2019 · 210 MW · 26 25 Nov 2019 · 298 MW · 23 26 Nov 2019 · 501 MW · 62 27 Nov 2019 · 137 MW · 32 28 Nov 2019 · 158 MW · 35 29 Nov 2019 · 115 MW · 24 30 Nov 2019 · 284 MW · 24 1 Dec 2019 · 210 MW · 21 2 Dec 2019 · 242 MW · 6 3 Dec 2019 · 3 MW · 1 4 Dec 2019 · 38 MW · 7 6 Dec 2019 · 56 MW · 4
18 Nov 21 Nov 22 Nov 24 Nov 27 Nov 30 Nov 3 Dec

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

35°high
33km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,083 ha in 2016, 4,104 ha in 2017, 446 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,739 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.6% of the area of London (120 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Aweil Centre where it started
    12,111 ha reached on 18 Nov
    1.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
17 Nov 34.8 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
18 Nov 33.8 °C 35 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
19 Nov 33.8 °C 36 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
20 Nov 34.7 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Nov 33.5 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Nov 34.1 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Nov 33.5 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Nov 33.2 °C 27 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Nov 33.4 °C 30 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
26 Nov 34.1 °C 30 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Nov 34.3 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
28 Nov 34.9 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Nov 34.7 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Nov 34.4 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Dec 34.7 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Dec 34.3 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Dec 34.0 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 Dec 33.9 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Dec 33.7 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Dec 34.0 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Dec after 34.2 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Dec after 33.7 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Dec after 32.9 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Dec after 33.6 °C 20 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Dec after 34.4 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Dec after 34.8 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Dec after 34.1 °C 33 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Dec after 35.0 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Dec after 34.8 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Dec after 33.8 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 10 Nov 2019
After · 13 Dec 2019

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 421Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in South Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Aweil Centre fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 November 2019 to 6 December 2019 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 November 2019 to 1 December 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,038 hectares (120.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Aweil Centre (12,111 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of South Sudan (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 1 December 2019 → 6 December 2019.
  2. Start date: 18 November 2019 → 17 November 2019.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 18 November 2019 to 1 December 2019. 421 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.